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The Lessons of Civil Defense Federalism for the Homeland Security Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2014

Patrick S. Roberts
Patrick S. Roberts*
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 26 , Issue 3: American Disaster Politics Gareth Davies, Editor , July 2014 , pp. 354 - 383
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

NOTES

1. This article benefited from the support of two National Science Foundation grants: SES-1041508 provided support for presenting an earlier version of this paper at a Law and Society conference panel in Boston in 2013; CMMI-1133263 supported the author’s research on local emergency management networks. The author’s dozens of interviews and informal conversations for the latter contemporary policy project led to the idea that the civil defense past could provide lessons for homeland security’s future.

2. Garrison, Dee, Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked (New York, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oakes, Guy, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Yoshpe, Harry B., Our Missing Shield: The US Civil Defense Program in Historical Perspective (Washington, D.C., 1981).Google Scholar

3. Christopher Cooper and Robert Block, Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security (New York, 2006); . Wise, Charles R,” Organizing for Homeland Security after Katrina: Is Adaptive Management What’s Missing?” Public Administration Review 66 (2006): 302–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perrow, Charles, The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters (Princeton, 2011).Google Scholar

4. In particular, state and local fusion centers have been criticized for lacking oversight. See Monahan, Torin and Palmer, Neal A., “The Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion Centers,” Security Dialogue 40 (2009): 617–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the use of common performance goals as a means of accountability, see Elaine Kamarck, “Applying 21st-Century Government to the Challenge of Homeland Security,” PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government Report, 2002, 1. On recommendations for using the Incident Command System as a means to centralize and coordinate, see Miskel, James F., Disaster Response and Homeland Security: What Works, What Doesn’t (Westport, Conn., 2006), 16–20Google Scholar; Tierney, Kathleen J., “Recent Developments in US Homeland Security Policies and Their Implications for the Management of Extreme Events,” in Handbook of Disaster Research, ed. Rodríguez, Havidán, . Quarantelli, Enrico L, and Dynes, Russell (New York, 2007), 405–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. For Americans’ level of involvement in civic associations, see Wuthnow, Robert, “The United States: Bridging the Privileged and the Marginalized?” in Democracies in Flux, ed. Putnam, Robert D. (New York, 2002): 59–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, 2002).

6. For just one account of the problems that the Department of Homeland Security poses for state and local emergency managers, see Birkland, Thomas and Waterman, Sarah, “Is Federalism the Reason for Policy Failure in Hurricane Katrina?” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 38 (2008): 692–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. May, Peter J., Jochim, Ashley E., and Sapotichne, Joshua, “Constructing Homeland Security: An Anemic Policy Regime,” Policy Studies Journal 39, no. 2 (2011): 285–307, 302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. DHS, “Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to the National Congress for Secure Communities,” 17 December 2007, available at: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1197986846840.shtm.

9. Tim Conlan, “From Cooperative to Opportunistic Federalism: Reflections on the Half-Century Anniversary of the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations,” Public Administration Review 66 (2006): 663–76.

10. Eisenhower, Dwight, “President’s News Conference of March 14, 1956,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower (Washington, D.C., 1956), 310.Google Scholar

11. Birkland and Waterman, “Is Federalism the Reason for Policy Failure in Hurricane Katrina?” 692–714; Mann, Thomas E. and Ornstein, Norman J., The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (New York, 2008).Google Scholar

12. Kapucu, Naim, Arslan, Tolga, and Collins, Matthew Lloyd, “Examining Intergovernmental and Interorganizational Response to Catastrophic Disasters Toward a Network-Centered Approach,” Administration & Society 42 (2010): 222–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geschwind, Carl-Henry, California Earthquakes: Science, Risk, and the Politics of Hazard Mitigation (Baltimore, 2001).Google Scholar

13. Coffman, Edward M., The Regulars, The American Army, 1989–1941 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004)Google Scholar. For an account of early civil defense, see Kerr, Thomas J., Civil Defense in the U.S.: Band-Aid for a Holocaust? (Boulder, 1983)Google Scholar, 10, 13. For the creation of a Council of National Defense charged with “coordinating resources and industries for national defense” and “stimulating civilian morale,” see “Records of the Council of National Defense,” National Archives, Record Group 62, 1915–37, http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/062.html#62.1.

14. The Army Appropriations Act of 1916 authorized the president to create a National Council of Defense to mobilize the home front for war. Breen, William J., Uncle Sam at Home: Civilian Mobilization, Wartime Federalism, and the Council of National Defense, 1917–1919 (Westport, Conn., 1984)Google Scholar, 4. Breen (1984, xvii) finds that “home front mobilization was more dependent on a decentralized, voluntarist council of defense system than on the centralized coercive powers of the adminsiration.”

15. President Wilson centralized what in those days was called civilian defense functions by signing the Army Appropriation Act (39 Stat. 649), on 29 August 1916. The act’s new Council of National Defense consisted of the secretaries of War, the Navy, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, and a presidentially appointed advisory commission. In May 1917, Secretary of War Newton Baker emphasized the importance of civilian defense to the war effort: “Under modern conditions, the whole nation is at war and it [is] as much in the home and on the farm as it is in the fighting front.” Newton D. Baker, memorandum, c. April 1917, OCDP register 171, entry 10, box 20, Suitland, Md.: Washington National Records Center, cited in Robert Miller, “The War That Never Came: Civilian Defense, Mobilization, and Morale during World War II” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1991), 16.

16. Breen, Uncle Sam at Home.

17. Jim Oberstar, Hearing of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, “Snow Disasters for Local, State, and Federal Governments in the National Capital Region: Response and Recovery Partnerships with FEMA,” Washington, D.C., 23 March 2010.

18. Franklin Cooling, “US Army Support of Civil Defense: The Formative Years,” Military Affairs 35 (1971): 7–11, 8.

19. Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 27.

20. Ibid., 24.

21. Kerr, Civil Defense in the U.S., 13.

22. On tensions between levels of government in homeland security, see Stockton, Paul N. and Roberts, Patrick S., “Findings from the Forum on Homeland Security After the Bush Administration: Next Steps in Building Unity of Effort,” Homeland Security Affairs 4 (2008)Google Scholar, http://www.hsaj.org/?article=4.2.4; Roberts, Patrick S., “Dispersed Federalism as a New Regional Governance for Homeland Security,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 38 (2008): 416–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chenoweth, Erica and Clarke, Susan E., “All Terrorism Is Local: Resources, Nested Institutions, and Governance for Urban Homeland Security in the American Federal System,” Political Research Quarterly 63 (2010): 495–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the development of DHS grants-in-aid, see Samuel Clovis, “Federalism, Homeland Security, and National Preparedness: A Case Study in the Development of Public Policy,” Homeland Security Affairs 2 (October 2006), http://www.hsaj.org/?article=2.3.4.

To take one example, state and local officials often praise fusion centers for providing a valuable resource for law enforcement, but federal officials question their value in supporting homeland security missions such as sharing intelligence preventing terrorism. The majority of DHS-funded fusion centers have become analytical hubs about information for many kinds of crimes beyond homeland security and terrorism-related issues, and this mission creep is cause for concern among federal officials and critics. See Monahan, Torin, “The Future of Security? Surveillance Operations at Homeland Security Fusion Centers,” Social Justice 37 (2010): 84–98Google Scholar; Monahan, Torin and Palmer, Neal A., “The Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion Centers,” Security Dialogue 40, no. 6 (2009): 617–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rollins, John and Connors, Tim, State Fusion Center Processes and Procedures: Best Practices and Recommendations (New York, 2007).Google Scholar

23. Clark, Charles S., “Homeland Security’s Fusion Centers Lambasted in Senate Report,” Government Executive, 2 October 2012. Available at http://www.govexec.com/defense/2012/10/homeland-securitys-fusion-centers-lambasted-senate-report/58535/.Google Scholar

24. U.S. Conference of Mayors director Paul Betters said that his organization was in “constant communication with municipal colleagues in England and Canada for the purpose of security detailed statements regarding the experiences of municipal authorities under wartime conditions.” Paul Betters to Fiorello LaGuardia, 1 February 1941, FHLP, Box 4528, Folder 7, quoted in Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 31.

25. Elwyn A. Mauck, “Civilian Defense in the United States: 1940–1945” (unpublished manuscript by the Historical Officer of the Office of Civilian Defense, July 1946), 2–3; Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 30–31.

26. Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 30.

27. Steele, Richard W., The Roosevelt Administration and the Media, 1933–1941 (Westport, Conn., 1985), 83–92.Google Scholar

28. Mauck, Civilian Defense in the United States, 5–6.

29. Leuchtenburg, William E., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York, 1962), 327–28Google Scholar; “Memorandum to the President, Wayne Coy, William Bullitt, and Harold. D. Smith, Wayne Coy Papers, Box 2 (FDRL), cited in Steele, Richard W., “Preparing the Public for War: Efforts to Establish a National Propaganda Agency,” American Historical Review 75 (October 1970): 1640–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1644. Volunteerism for Steele is simply “propaganda of the act,” designed to encourage citizens to rally around the flag in the war effort.

30. Dunn, Susan, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler: The Election Amid the Storm (New Haven, 2013).Google Scholar

31. FDR created the Office of Civilian Defense in 1941, and during World War II people continued to use the term “civilian.” After the war, however, planners switched to “civil” defense, specifically in 1946 with the Provost Marshal General’s Study 3B–1, Defense Against Enemy Action Directed at Civilians. The term civil emphasizes the protection of people, the economy, and government, not just the citizenry. See Lyon G. Tyler, Jr., “Civil Defense: The Impact of the Planning Years, 1945–1950” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1967).

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Executive Order 8757 Establishing the Office of Civilian Defense,” 20 May 1941. Available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16117.

33. Becker, Andrew and Schulz, G. W., “Local Cops Ready for War With Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons,” The Daily Beast and Center for Investigative Reporting, 21 December 2011, available at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/20/local-cops-ready-for-war-with-homeland-security-funded-military-weapons.htmlGoogle Scholar Chenoweth and Clarke make the point that more localities with more “advanced, multilevel, and formal governance arrangements” are more effective at using federal homeland security grants because these grants are so complicated to administer. See Chenoweth, Erica, and Clarke, Susan E.. “All terrorism is local: Resources, nested institutions, and governance for urban homeland security in the American federal system.” Political Research Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2010): 495–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar. State and local emergency managers who participated in a homeland security expert forum chafed at the persnickety oversight from federal officials. See Paul N. Stockton and Patrick S. Roberts, “Findings from the Forum on Homeland Security After the Bush Administration: Next Steps in Building Unity of Effort,” Homeland Security Affairs 4, no. 2 (2008), http://www.hsaj.org/?article=4.2.4.

34. For an example of scholars concerned about a lack of state and local accountabiltiy to national homeland security goals, see 2009 Torin Monahan and Neal A. Palmer, “The Emerging Politics of DHS Fusion Centers.” Security Dialogue 40 (6): 617–636.

35. Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 50.

36. Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York City, 493. Quoted in Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 46.

37. “Civilians Everywhere Offer Voluntary Aid as LaGuardia Takes Charge of OCD,” Defense, Vol. 2, May 27, 1941, 3–5.

38. Robert Earnest Miller, “The War That Never Came: Civilian Defense, Mobilization, and Morale During World War II” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1991), 48–50.

39. For example, Bernard F. Dickman, the former mayor of St. Louis, and Joseph D. Scholtz, the former mayor of Louisville, were named as inspector generals in OCD regions, charged with reporting to the director. “Director LaGuardia Names Three Inspector Generals,” Defense, 2 (22 July 1941): 22.

40. Winkler, Allan M., Home Front USA: America During World War II (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1986)Google Scholar, 31. Mauck, “Civilian Defense in the United States,” 5–8.

41. “The City’s Part in National Deviance,” American City 56 (June 1941): 5, quoted in Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 60.

42. Cardoszier, V. R., The Mobilization of the United States in World War II: How the Government, Military, and Industry Prepared for War (Jefferson, N.C., 1995), 185Google Scholar; Eiler, Keith E., Mobilizing America: Robert P. Patterson and the War Effort, 1940–1945 (Ithaca, 1997)Google Scholar; Mauck, “Civilian Defense in the United States, 13–14; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York, 1971), 842.

43. Eleanor Roosevelt, “What Does Pan-American Friendship Mean?” Liberty 18 (4 October 1941): 10–11; Eleanor Roosevelt, “Shall We Draft American Women?” Liberty 18 (13 September 1941): 10–11. “Women in Defense: A Script by Mrs. Roosevelt,” New York Times Magazine, 7 December 1941, 6–7.

44. McEnaney, Laura, “Civil Defense Begins at Home”: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton, 2000), 17.Google Scholar

45. Olson, Lynne, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1939–1945 (New York, 2013).Google Scholar

46. Chicago Tribune, 1 December 1941, OCDP, RG 171, entry 10, box 2, cited in Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 69.

47. Preliminary Report by Fiorello H. LaGuardia on Civilian Defense Week, FHLP, Box 3767 (NYMA), Folder 4; “LaGuardia Calls for More Volunteers in All Phases of Civilian Defense,” Defense, vol. 2, 25 November 1941, 31, quoted in Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 67.

48. A Handbook for Fire Watchers (Washington, D.C., 1941).

49. Cardoszier, The Mobilization of the United States in World War II, 185; Eiler, Mobilizing America; Mauck, “Civilian Defense in the United States,” 13–14.

50. Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 82–94.

51. A scholarly summary of the strains of homeland security research can be found in the journals Homeland Security Affairs and Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. For three takes on the field’s priorities, see Bellavita, Christopher, “Changing Homeland Security: In 2010, Was Homeland Security Useful?” Homeland Security Affairs 7, Article 1 (February 2011)Google Scholar; May, Peter J., Jochim, Ashley E., and Sapotichne, Joshua, “Constructing Homeland Security: An Anemic Policy Regime,” Policy Studies Journal 39, no. 2 (2011): 285–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ripberger, Joseph T., “Whither Civil Defense and Homeland Security in the Study of Public Policy? A Look at Research on the Policy, the Public, and the Process,” Policy Studies Journal 39, no. s1 (2011): 77–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52. Ritchie, Donald A., James A. Landis, Dean of the Regulators (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 103–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Kerr, Civil Defense in the U.S., 13. Landis left the position on 13 September 1943.

54. “The President Reports on the Home Front,” 12 October 1942, in Rosenman, Samuel I., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 vols. (New York, 1938–50)Google Scholar, 1942: 416, 432, also quoted in Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 2.

55. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? 36; Lee B. Kennett, For the Duration: The United States Goes to War (New York, 1985), 33–36.

56. Miller, “The War That Never Came,” i; Reginald C. Foster, “Block-Aid Runner for the OCD,” Nation’s Business, vol. 31, issue 6, June 1943, 90–93.

57. Miller, “The War That Never Came,” 11.

58. Meyers, Peter, Civic War and the Corruption of the Citizen (Chicago, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ansell, Christopher, Pragmatist Democracy (New York, 2011).Google Scholar

59. Citizen preparedness was a significant part of the original DHS strategy. See U.S. Department of Homeland Security, National Strategy for Homeland Security (Washington, D.C., July 2002). The term “culture of preparedness” can be found in: U.S. White House, “The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned,” foreword by Frances Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (Washington, D.C., 23 February 2006), 79. On citizens’ lack of preparedness and engagement, see Peter D. Hart and Public Opinion Strategies, “The Aftershock of Katrina and Rita: Public Not Moved to Prepare,” Washington, D.C., Council for Excellence in Government and the American Red Cross, December 2005. Paul C. Light, “The Katrina Effect on American Preparedness: A Report on the Lessons Americans Learned in Watching the Katrina Catastrophe Unfold,” New York University Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response, undated.

60. Civil Defense Programs in Portland, 1936–1963 (Portland, Ore., n.d.).

61. “Your Guide for Defense Against the H-Bomb,” July 1955, Portland, Ore.; Trudy Flores and Sarah Griffith, “Civil Defense Underground Headquarters,” Oregon Historical Society’s Oregon History Project, 2002; Communication from Brian K. Johnson, City of Portland Archives, 10 July 2013.

62. Herman Edwards, “Civil Defense Is Dead in Oregon,” Los Angeles Times, 16 June 1963, A2.

63. By that time, civil defense had become politically suspicious among progressive politicians. Senator Wayne Morse called civil defense “senseless, wasteful, and unrealistic” in 1963 and ignited a conversation among his constituents in Oregon. “Congress Cool Toward Fallout Shelter Plans,” Los Angeles Times, 29 May 1963, C7.

64. The government’s role in disaster relief has a long tradition, but in the 1960s it was still rather limited compared to contemporary times or to other policy areas. See Dauber, Michele Landis, The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State (Chicago, 2013)Google Scholar, and Roberts, Patrick S., Disasters and the American State: How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Public Prepare for the Unexpected (New York, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65. Derthick, Martha, “Crossing Thresholds: Federalism in the 1960s,” Journal of Policy History 8 (1996): 64–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. The 1951 civil defense film is available here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ADuckandC1951.ogg.

67. Roberts, Patrick S., “Civil Defense and the Foundations of Disaster Policy, 1914–1979,” in Disasters and the American State (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, Patrick S., “FEMA and the Prospects for Reputation-Based Autonomy,” Studies in American Political Development 20 (Spring 2006): 57–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bea, Keith, “The Formative Years: 1950–1978,” in Emergency Management: The American Experience, 1900–2010, ed. Rubin, Claire, 2nd ed. (Boca Raton, 2012), 83–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68. May, Ernest R., ed., American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68 (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

69. Grossman, Neither Dead Nor Red, 81; FCDA Annual Report for 1952 (Washington, D.C., 1952), 66.

70. Wilbur J. Cohen and Evelyn F. Boyer, “Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950: Summary and Legislative History,” Social Security Bulletin (April 1951): 11–16, 14.

71. Federal Civil Defense Administration, “Annual Statistical Report,” Battle Creek, Mich., 30 June 1955, available at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/docs/HistoricalInterest/FCDA1955AnnualStatisticalReport.pdf (a ccessed 27 May 2010).

72. Pemberton, William E., Bureaucratic Politics: Executive Reorganization During the Truman Administration (Columbia, Mo., 1979)Google Scholar, 174; Brian Balogh, Joanna Grisinger, and Philip Zelikow, “Making Democracy Work: A Brief History of Twentieth-Century Executive Reorganization,” Miller Center of Public Affairs Working Paper, Charlottesville, 2002, 44.

73. The Bull Board concluded that the military should have only limited involvement in civil defense. Military planners feared that civilians would want the military to run civil defense but concluded that it was in the military’s best interest to keep civil affairs in domestic agencies for fear of the budgetary impact and the danger that civil defense would erode combat effectiveness. See National Military Establishment, Office of Secretary of Defense, “Study of Civil Defense (Bull Board Report),” Washington, D.C., 1948, 7; Lyon G. Tyler Jr., “Civil Defense: The Impact of the Planning Years, 1945–1950” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1967).

74. In the 1950s, a second Hoover Commission examined possible executive branch reorganization, but the executive himself, Dwight Eisenhower, preferred to look inward for advice, creating the President’s Advisory Committee on Government in parallel. PACGO followed the fashion of public administration of the day by recommending the creation of new, larger hierarchical departments in order to rationalize management. The committee’s recommendation to merge the Housing and Home Finance Administration and the Federal Civil Defense Administration in a new department was never implemented, however. Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, The Department of Defense: Documents on Establishment and Organization, 1944–1978 (Washington, D.C., 1978), 173–74; Balogh, Grisinger, and Zelikow, “Making Democracy Work,” 40–43.

75. On the developing of politicians’ and bureaucrats’ credit claiming, see Roberts, Disasters and the American State.

76. Val Peterson, “Co-ordinating and Extending Federal Assistance,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 309 (1957): 52–64, 52.

77. Ibid., 53–54.

78. Ibid., 55.

79. Ibid., 63–64.

80. “North Carolina Laws on Civil Defense, Reproduced by the North Carolina Civil Defense Agency, Raleigh, April 1965,” State Civil Defense Agency Intelligence Section, Public Information Office, Box 6, Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs, Office of Civil Defense, State Civil Defense, 1951–72, State Archives, quoted in Frank A. Blazich Jr., “Accelerated Action: North Carolina Civil Defense Agency and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October–December 1962,” North Carolina Historical Review 86, no. 1 (January 2009): 53.

81. Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 63; Summary of Operations, July 1950–September 1952,” Box 9, NCCD, State Archives, 1–2.

82. Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 65.

83. Paul Boyer’s detailed examination of newspaper articles, church sermons, polls, and scientific meetings finds that before roughly the end of World War II to the beginning of the Korean War, many organizations worked to convince Americans that the world would be destroyed by nuclear war. Civil defense publications intended to convince a nervous public of the opposite. The National Security Resources Board’s book Survival Under Atomic Attack, published in 1950, advised citizens, “You can SURVIVE atomic warfare.” The book suggested that people could rinse away radioactivity with soap and water. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill, 1985); Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York, 2013), 3–27; National Security Resources Board, Civil Defense Office, Survival Under Atomic Attack (Washington, D.C, 1950), 3, 30.

84. Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 55–56. The 1950s saw increased atomic testing, including the Castle BRAVO test in the Marshall Islands on 1 March 1954, which at fifteen megatons was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States. A useful collection of documents relating to nuclear testing can be found at http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/atmosphr/index.html.

85. Kerr, Civil Defense in the U.S., 41.

86. Ibid., 104; “National Fallout Shelter Survey, 1948–1986,” Washington, D.C. Portions available at http://csudigitalhumanities.org/exhibits/exhibits/show/shelter-survey.

87. House Committee on Government Operations (HCGO). Military Operations Subcommittee, Hearings, Civil Defense, 86th Cong., 2nd sess., 1960, 317–18.

88. Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 67.

89. For example, the governor worked with the survey and local authorities to identify more shelters. Colleges and universities were particularly good prospects because they had gyms, theaters, and large basements that could double as shelters. See Memorandum from Governor Terry Sanford to All Department and Agency Heads, Having Emergency Assignments under the North Carolina Operation Survival Plan, 24 October 1962, Box 140, Sanford Papers, State Archives, cited in Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 68.

90. Teletype message from U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Civil Defense, Region III to NCCD, 30 October 1962, Box 6, NCCD, State Archives; Jenny Baker Devine, “The Farmer and the Atom: The Iowa State Cooperative Extension Service and Rural Civil Defense, 1955–1970,” Annals of Iowa 66 (Spring 2007): 161–94; Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 80.

91. For one example of these complaints, see Stockton and Roberts. In 1962, the Governors’ Civil Defense Committee unanimously adopted fifteen resolutions that all governors would follow, including that “each Governor should personally report to the Mayors and local government executives and to the people of his state with respect to these recommendations and the character of the need for fallout protection and other civil defense activities.” Telegram from New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to the Honorable Terry Sanford, Governor of North Carolina, 28 October 1962, Box 140, Sanford Papers, State Archives, cited in Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 81.

92. Allison Ring, “El Paso’s Civil Defense Network in Crisis: History of Local Nuclear Preparedness, Focusing on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,” Password 52, no. 4 (2006): 197–98.

93. McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, 7.

94. Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 87–91; Memorandum to Local Directors from State Director on Shelter Construction Workshops, 9 November 1962, Box 6, NCCD, State Archives, cited in Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 91.

95. Blazich, “Accelerated Action,” 93.

96. See, for example, Clymer, Kenton, “U.S. Homeland Defense in the 1950s: The Origins of the Ground Observer Corps,” Journal of Military History 75 (July 2011): 835–85Google Scholar; “Plane Spotter Need Stressed,” Spokesman-Review, 31 August 1951, A18; Simpson, Christopher, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945–1960 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Federal Civil Defense Administration, “Women Expected to Form Major Part of CD Force,” Civil Defense Alert, April 1952, 2; City Council of Philadelphia, “Special Committee to Investigate Civil Defense Program,” Philadelphia City Archives, 25 February 1952, 13; Gellman, Benet D., “Planning for a National Nuclear Emergency: The Organization of Government and Federal-State Relations,” Virginia Law Review 52 (April 1966): 435–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97. “Fire Prevention and Civil Defense Go Hand in Hand,” Negro Star, 26 October 1951, A1.

98. Ames, Walter, “Civil Defense Saving Tax Money, Chief Says,” Los Angeles Times, 16 June 1963, A2.Google Scholar

99. Hurricane Audrey in 1957 is another such example. See Baker, George W. and Cottrell, Leonard S. Jr., eds., Behavioral Science and Civil Defense (Washington, D.C., 1962), 126.Google Scholar

100. In 1965 dollars, damages were estimated at $1.42 billion, which would be between $10 and $15 billion in 2010 dollars. Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, “Operations Progress Report: Disaster Activities in Connection with Hurricane ‘Betsy’ (Final Report),” 28 July 1967, http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/Hurricane_files/Hurricane%20Betsy%20Final%20Report.pdf; U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hurricane Betsy Disaster of September 1965: Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee to Investigate Areas of Destruction of Hurricane Betsy of the Committee on Public Works House of Representatives, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 25 September 1965; Craig E. Colton, “From Betsy to Katrina: Shifting Policies, Lingering Vulnerabilities,” paper presented at the McGrann Research Conference, April 2006, available at http://magrann-conference.rutgers.edu/2006/_papers/colten.pdf.

101. Louisiana governor John McKeithen called Betsy “the greatest catastrophe in our State since the Civil War.” U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hurricane Betsy Disaster of September 1965: Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee to Investigate Areas of Destruction of Hurricane Betsy of the Committee on Public Works House of Representatives, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 25 September 1965, 8; Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, “Operations Progress Report: Disaster Activities in Connection with Hurricane ‘Betsy’ (Final Report),” 28 July 1967, http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/Hurricane_files/Hurricane%20Betsy%20Final%20Report.pdf; Edward F. Haas, “Victor H. Schiro, Hurricane Betsy, and the ‘Forgiveness Bill,’” Gulf Coast Historical Review 6 (Fall 1990): 67–90; For a comparison with 2006’s Hurricane Karina, see Kent B. Germany, “The Politics of Poverty and History: Racial Inequality and the Long Prelude to Katrina,” Journal of American History 94 (December 2007): 743–51.

102. “The Nation: Hurricane: Were Warning Adequate?” Los Angeles Times, 19 September 1965, J5.

103. Ibid., J5.

104. Associated Press, “Giant Pumps Battle Flood in Louisiana: Dr. Teller Attacks Civil Defense,” Chicago Tribune, 16 September 1965, 21.

105. “Profiteering Reported in New Orleans: Storm Refugees Growing Restive,” New York Times, 13 September 1965, 19.

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